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Related to: 'Ragdoll'

Orion

Hangman

Daniel Cole

Authors:

Daniel Cole

Eighteen months have passed, but the scars the Ragdoll murders left behind are reopened on a daily basis, the legacy of the infamous investigation infecting all aspects of daily life. Despite the media's best efforts, copycat murders all over the planet have proven to be nothing more than violent mutilations by the unimaginative and deranged. Andrea Hall's memoirs are topping the charts while Halloween saw children all over the country distastefully donning grotesque costumes of the real-life monster in their midst. The Ragdoll, apparently, was here to stay.Over-promoted into the role of Chief Inspector following her work on the case, Emily Baxter is ill-suited to her new bureaucratic posting. Alex Edmunds won't admit it, but he is bored too, having returned to his monotonous job in Fraud after fighting so hard to escape. When Baxter is summoned to a meeting with Special Agents Elliot Curtis of the FBI and Damien Rouche of the CIA, she is presented with graphic photographs of the latest copycat murder: a body contorted into a familiar pose, strung up impossibly across the Brooklyn Bridge, the word BAIT carved deep into its chest. The victim's name: William Fawkes, a Wall Street banker and a very clear message that this murder is different to the others.Baxter is ordered to assist the unrelentingly professional Curtis and the charmingly eccentric Rouche with their investigation, another PR exercise to appease the ever-demanding public. Accompanying them to New York and the scene of another murder, they find the same word scrawled across the victim, torn into the assailant - the word PUPPET. The team helplessly play catch up as the murders continue to grow in both spectacle and depravity on both sides of the Atlantic, building towards a devastating crescendo. Their only hope: to work out who the bait is intended for, how the Puppets are chosen but, most importantly of all, who is holding the strings.

Alan Furst

Alan Furst is widely recognised as the master of the historical spy novel. Now translated into eighteen languages, he is the author of novels including MISSION TO PARIS, SPIES OF THE BALKANS - a TV Book Club choice - THE SPIES OF WARSAW, which became a BBC mini-series starring David Tennant and THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT. Born in New York, he lived for many years in Paris and travelled as a journalist in Eastern Europe and Russia. He has written extensively for Esquire and the International Herald Tribune. He now lives in Long Island.www.alanfurst.net

Anthony Horowitz

Anthony Horowitz is one of the UK's most prolific and successful writers. His novels The House of Silk and Moriarty were Sunday Times Top 10 bestsellers and sold in more than thirty-five countries around the world. His bestselling Alex Rider series for children has sold more than nineteen million copies worldwide. He is also the author of a James Bond novel, Trigger Mortis.As a TV screenwriter he created both Midsomer Murders and the BAFTA-winning Foyle's War; other TV work includes Poirot, the widely-acclaimed mini-series Collision and Injustice and most recently, New Blood for the BBC. Anthony sits on the board of the Old Vic and regularly contributes to a wide variety of national newspapers and magazines. In January 2014 he was awarded an OBE for services to literature. Anthony Horowitz lives in London. www.anthonyhorowitz.com @AnthonyHorowitz

Bernhard Schlink

Bernhard Schlink was born in Germany is 1944. A professor of law at Humboldt University, Berlin, and Cardozo Law School, New York, he is the author of the major internationally bestselling novel The Reader, which became an Oscar-winning film starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, the short story collections Flights of Love and Summer Lies, and several prize-winning crime novels. He lives in Berlin and New York.

Charlaine Harris

Author of a number of international bestselling series, Charlaine Harris' many novels include the Sookie Stackhouse series, now also known as the books behind the HBO original series, True Blood. She has also penned the Harper Connelly mysteries, the Lily Bard Investigations and the Aurora Teagarden cases. Her latest novel, first in a brand new series, is Midnight Crossroad.Charlaine Harris was born and raised in the Mississippi River Delta area. Now married with children, she currently resides in Texas.

Charles Martin

Charles Martin is a New York Times bestselling author of thirteen novels, including his most recent book Long Way Gone. His work is available in 17 languages. He lives in Jacksonville, Florida with his wife and their three sons.

Daniel Cole

At 33 years old, Daniel Cole has worked as a paramedic, an RSPCA officer and most recently for the RNLI, driven by an intrinsic need to save people or perhaps just a guilty conscience about the number of characters he kills off in his writing. On writing his debut novel RAGDOLL, which began life as an unproduced television pilot, Daniel says: 'After five years of rejections, I had a yearning to actually finish one of my stories rather than leave it collecting dust with the others under my bed. With no formal training at all, I feel I wrote the book very selfishly, with the aim of creating something that I, personally, would love: as shocking as it is humorous, as thought-provoking as it is relentlessly entertaining, and with a cast of characters who feel like friends by the end of it.' He currently lives in sunny Bournemouth and can usually be found down the beach when he ought to be writing book two instead.

Dirk Kurbjuweit

Dirk Kurbjuweit is deputy editor-in-chief at German current affairs magazine Der Spiegel, where he has worked since 1999, and divides his time between Berlin and Hamburg. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize for journalism, and is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels, many of which, including FEAR, have been adapted for film, television and radio in Germany. FEAR is the first of his works to be translated into English.

Elisa Lodato

Elisa Lodato grew up in London and read English at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After graduating she went to live in Japan where she spent a year teaching, travelling and learning to speak the language. On returning to the UK she spent many happy years working for Google before training to become an English teacher. Helping pupils to search for meaning in a text inspired Elisa to take up the pen and write her own. Her first novel, An Unremarkable Body, was longlisted for the Bath Novel Award 2016. Elisa lives in Surrey with her husband and two children.@LodatoElisa

Emma Powell

Emma Powell's recent theatre credits include '.45' for Hampstead Theatre, Lady Macbeth and Lady Capulet for C Company, roles in 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' and 'Julius Caesar' for the RSC and 'Persuasion' and 'The Rivals' for ReCreation Theatre Company. Her Radio Drama work includes the classic series 'A Dance to the Music of Time' for Radio 4 and 'Use It or Lose It' for Radio 3 as well as the comedy horror podcast series 'In the Gloaming'. She also has many voice-over credits. GRACELING and FIRE are her first audiobooks for Orion.

Francesca Jakobi

Francesca studied psychology at the University of Sussex, followed by a stint teaching English in Turkey and the Czech Republic. On returning to her native London she got a job as a reporter on a local paper and has worked in journalism ever since. She's currently a layout editor at the Financial Times. Bitter is her first novel.

Harriet Cummings

Harriet Cummings' debut novel, We All Begin as Strangers, was shortlisted for the Books are my Bag Reader Award 2017. She is a freelance writer with a background in history of art and gender studies. As a script writer, she has had work performed at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as independent venues around London. A graduate of the prestigious Faber Academy creative writing course, Harriet now lives in Leamington Spa with her husband and springer spaniel.Follow Harriet on Twitter @HarrietWriter or find out more at www.harrietcummingsauthor.com

Joe Hill

Joe Hill is a recipient of the Ray Bradbury Fellowship and the winner of the A.E. Coppard Long Fiction Prize, William Crawford, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards. His short fiction has appeared in literary, mystery and horror collections and magazines in Britain and America.For more information, visit www.joehillfiction.com, visit joehillsthrills.tumblr.com, or follow @Joe_Hill on twitter.

Mari Hannah

Mari Hannah is a multi-award-winning author whose authentic voice is no happy accident. A former probation officer, she lives in rural Northumberland with her partner, an ex-murder detective. Mari turned to script-writing when her career was cut short following an assault on duty. Her debut, The Murder Wall (adapted from a script she developed with the BBC) won her the Polari First Book Prize. Its follow-up, Settled Blood, picked up a Northern Writers' Award. Her Kate Daniels series is in development with Stephen Fry's production company, Sprout Pictures. She is currently Reader in Residence for Harrogate International Crime Writing Festival. Mari's body of work won her the CWA Dagger in the Library 2017, an incredible honour to receive so early on in her career.

Mason Cross

Mason Cross was born in Glasgow in 1979. He studied English at the University of Stirling and currently works in the voluntary sector. He has written a number of short stories, including 'A Living', which was shortlisted for the Quick Reads 'Get Britain Reading' Award. He lives in Glasgow with his wife and three children.Find out more at www.masoncross.net or follow him on Twitter @MasonCrossBooks

Michael Connelly

A former police reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Connelly is the internationally bestselling author of the Harry Bosch thriller series. The TV tie-in series - Bosch - is one of the most watched original series on Amazon Prime and is now in its third season. He is also the author of several bestsellers, including the highly acclaimed legal thriller, The Lincoln Lawyer, which was selected for the Richard & Judy Book Club in 2006, and has been President of the Mystery Writers of America. His books have been translated into thirty-nine languages and have won awards all over the world, including the Edgar and Anthony Awards. He spends his time in California and Florida.To find out more, visit Michael's website or follow him on Twitter or Facebook.www.michaelconnelly.com@Connellybooksf/MichaelConnellyBooks

Nathan Englander

Nathan Englander is also the author of the internationally bestselling story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, and the novel The Ministry of Special Cases. Translated into twenty-two languages, he has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Malamud Award, the Frank O'Connor Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. He lives in Brooklyn.www.nathanenglander.com@NathanEnglanderwww.facebook.com/NEnglandernathanenglander.tumblr.com/

Paul Torday

Paul Torday burst on to the literary scene in 2007 with his first novel, SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN, an immediate international bestseller that has been translated into 28 languages and has been made into a film starring Ewan McGregor, Kristin Scott Thomas and Emily Blunt. His subsequent novels, THE IRRESISTIBLE INHERITANCE OF WILBERFORCE, THE GIRL ON THE LANDING, THE HOPELESS LIFE OF CHARLIE SUMMERS, MORE THAN YOU CAN SAY, THE LEGACY OF HARTLEPOOL HALL and LIGHT SHINING IN THE FOREST, were all published to great critical acclaim. He was married with two sons by a previous marriage, had two stepsons, and lived close to the River North Tyne. He died at home in December 2013.

Peter James

Peter James is an international bestselling thriller writer. He is a New York Times bestseller, as well as having 11 consecutive Sunday Times No 1s, and he is published in 37 languages. His DS Roy Grace crime novels have sold 18 million copies worldwide. Prior to becoming a full-time author, he was responsible for 25 movies. In 1994 Penguin published his novel, 'Host', on two floppy discs as the world's first electronic novel. His novels have won numerous awards, most recently the coveted 2016 CWA Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence, and he was publicly voted by WH Smith - Britain's biggest book selling chain - The Best Crime Author Of All Time. Visit Peter James on YouTube: www.peterjames.com/youtube

Rob Sinclair

Rob is the author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling Enemy series of espionage thrillers featuring embattled agent Carl Logan, with over 500,000 copies sold to date. The Enemy series has received widespread critical acclaim with many reviewers and readers having likened Rob's work to authors at the very top of the genre, including Lee Child and Vince Flynn.